Sympathy
by Jeswin
Summary: After Forgiving, a little reaction.


Title: Sympathy

Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to Joss and many other people who are not me.

Summary: Just a little sympathy.

A/N: This was originally written to be the beginning of something else, but when I came to a certain point it seemed to me that the story ought to end there – so it does.  I may still write what I had originally intended to write, but I may or may not leave this as the beginning.

The Hyperion was silent.  Gunn stood alone in the lobby and wondered why this was so.  The building was old, it usually sounded like an old man sitting himself down on a chair; knees creaking, muscles sagging, breath sighing, groaning softly as his old body settled in.  There wasn't so much as a clanking pipe or the clicking buzz that always emanated from the fuse box behind the stairs.  Gunn had avoided walking by that fuse box whenever he could help it, it sounded to him like the sound electrical wires made in the movies right before they blew and electrocuted whoever was dumb enough to be standing next to them.  It made no noise now; maybe it had already blown.  It wouldn't surprise him, it seemed to match the theme.  And the rest is silence.  Sounded like something English would have said.  

At this thought Gunn stopped his survey of the hotel's lack of life and instead contemplated his shoes.  There was glass on the floor beneath his feet, Gunn didn't bother wondering where it came from or what had broken - he'd lost track of the crashes and booms he'd heard today, huh... just today.  It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since....  Gunn's thoughts shied away once again and he focused on the glass itself.  Tiny pieces like crushed ice from all the feet trampling back and forth.  Gunn shifted his weight from one foot to the other; the glass made a crunching noise as his feet moved.  The sound was satisfying so Gunn kept it up, nearly rocking from side to side listening to the glass crunch.  Gunn remembered the last trip with his parents; before his dad lost his job, before his mom died, before dad took off to... wherever it was he went, leaving him and Alonna to survive on their own - before the world started to slide.  His dad had to go to New York for a project; Aunt Mara had just died and she'd left them a big lump of cash, so the whole family took the trip and used the time once the job was finished for a vacation.  Once they'd seen the tops of all the famous tall buildings (making the appropriate comments about the people/ants and what would happen if they spit over the side) and his mom had dragged them to all the museums within walking distance ("being so close to all this culture and not at least giving it a look would be a crime"),  they made their way to Central Park.  So many playgrounds in one place - Alonna was in heaven.  Gunn had been fascinated with the snow.  It had already melted off the streets but there was some left in undisturbed patches on the wide stretches of lawn.  The sound it had made when he'd crunched his way carefully across it was like the sound the glass made now.  Gunn closed his eyes and continued to rock and crunch.

Gunn pictured the man upstairs and thought back to the fight at the hospital.  Angel shrugged off the orderlies easily enough and vanished - literally, after they'd pulled him off of Wes.  Once things settled, Gunn left Fred to sit with Wesley and came back to the hotel to confront Angel.  Maybe knock him on his ass.  Granted, there wasn't much chance of that happening, Gunn knew where things stood despite his bluster.  At least he would ask Angel where he got off attacking Wes like that when Wes had only been trying to save Conner... and a few blows might not be a bad idea, just to drive the point home.  Even if the punches wound up hurting Gunn's knuckles more than they would Angel, at least Gunn could release some of his own frustration with this mess.  Gunn slammed through the doors full of righteous fury, mouth half open and ready to shout, and stopped in his tracks.  Angel didn't look up at Gunn's entrance, didn't so much as twitch.  Angel was sitting on the couch, Conner's bassinet in front of him, and he was hugging one of Conner's stuffed animals to his chest the way Gunn had often seen him holding Conner - like something so dear he could barely stand to touch it for fear of breaking it, and yet couldn't for a moment stand to let it go.  Angel was rocking gently back and forth and humming something that wasn't a song, but was a lullaby nonetheless, tuneless but soothing.  It took Gunn a few seconds to snap out of his shock enough to remember his mouth was still open and close it.  Anger and rage he'd expected, he'd even been prepared to trade blows, but this... this was... Gunn didn't know what this was.

Gunn found himself crouching in front of Angel, on the other side of the bassinet.  Gunn opened his mouth a few times to say something, only to shut it when he couldn't figure out what.  He didn't know how to react to Angel's current behavior.  Gunn crouched there for a while, couldn't say how long, and watched Angel.  Gunn couldn't keep his eyes on any one spot, like if he lingered too long the force of his gaze would have been a physical pressure that Angel would feel.  And if Angel felt it he might have looked up and it seemed wrong to disturb him.  It almost seemed as if, if the moment were allowed to continue, it might become something else.  Something that wouldn't mean that everything was out of control and that there was nowhere to stand where the ground wasn't crumbling.  

Eventually Gunn's eyes were drawn to Angel's face, or more accurately to the top of his head since he was looking down, not at the stuffed animal in his arms, just down and at nothing Gunn was able to see.  It was then that Angel looked up and Gunn involuntarily sucked in a breath at what he saw.  Gunn felt something starting in his heart and spreading rapidly outwards; it felt like the thing was eating up his insides as it went, leaving emptiness behind and that empty place HURT.  Angel's face was contorted, his mouth set in a scream that made no sound.  Angel looked like he wanted to cry but couldn't because there were so many tears that they wouldn't all fit through his eyes - like a tiny hole in a dam, there's so much water on the other side that the weight and pressure of all of it against the hole keeps any from escaping.  

Looking into those eyes, Gunn remembered being told that Angel had been sucked through a portal into Hell, the REAL Hell, and had been there for five hundred years before he was brought back by forces still unknown.  At the time, Gunn had had enough trouble believing that there was a real Hell.  The thought of what had happened to Angel there had been too much to grasp and looking at Angel then, it hadn't seemed to be bothering him.  Cordelia had been the one to tell him and when she had she'd seemed unconcerned, offhand even.  So Gunn had shrugged it off.  Months later sitting next to an empty bassinet and looking into Angel's eyes Gunn felt that thought come back to him, felt his mind wrap around it, because all that Angel had suffered in Hell was there in Angel's eyes.  Gunn might never know the physical details of Angel's stay in Hell, but at that moment he saw the pain of it.    

Gunn was sucking breaths rapidly through his teeth trying to pull back from that void before he fell in, when Angel spoke.  "He's gone."  The tone matched the eyes and Gunn felt he ought to say something to that.  Something in comfort or sympathy, but Gunn figured there wasn't enough of either in the world to make the memories of Hell showing in Angel's eyes feel better; but Angel's words, maybe not the tone but the content, those Gunn remembered - remembered the times when he'd said them.  So he said, "I know."

In the still, empty lobby the glass was still crunching beneath Gunn's feet.


End file.
